This invention relates generally to headpieces used by technicians, specifically medical personnel, including surgeons. Even more particularly, this invention relates to apparatus for retaining eyeglasses or safety glasses in place on technicians during procedures performed by the technicians.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,123,115 to Braswell-Moore describes a surgeon's headpiece having an elongated, flexible eyeglass retainer member attached to a front portion of a cap of the headpiece for extending below the cap, passing about a bridge of eyeglasses, and doubling back on itself to fasten on itself. In a depicted embodiment of that patent, the eyeglass retainer member is fastened to the cap in such a manner that a proximal end portion thereof, which is attached to the interior of the cap, is exposed at the exterior of the cap by a radial slit in the cap. Although the cap of the headpiece of U.S. Pat. No. 5,123,115 includes a tether about a lower edge thereof which can be tied to adjust the headpiece to various diameter heads, this adjustment does not take into consideration a distance from a wearer's crown to his nose. That is, the headpiece of U.S. Pat. No. 5,123,115 will work for those having average-size and large-size heads, however, for one having a smaller than average-size head, a front lower edge of the cap can get too close to the wearer's eyes and nose. Such a person can adjust the size of a standard surgeon's headpiece (a headpiece not having an eyeglass retainer member) by folding upwardly a front lower-edge margin of its cap before tying the adjusting tether in back of the person's head. However, the surgeon headpiece of U.S. Pat. No. 5,123,115 complicates this fold-back adjustment since the eyeglass retainer thereof is fastened to the front portion of the cap down to its lower edge so that, a user cannot fold the lower-edge margin upwardly. Thus, it is an object of this invention to provide a headpiece for technicians of a type having an eyeglass retainer attached to a front portion of a cap thereof which also allows a front lower-edge margin of the cap to be folded upwardly for adjusting the size of the headpiece to fit various size heads.
Another problem with the surgeon's headpiece of U.S. Pat. No. 5,123,115 is that it is rather expensive to construct in that one must sew the eyeglass retainer thereof to edges of the radial slit in the cap. U.S. Pat. No. 4,387,471 to Hsu et al. had previously suggested to use an adhesive for detachably connecting a retainer to an exterior surface of a front portion of a surgeon's hood. Although such an attachment is less expensive than the attachment suggested Braswell-Moore in U.S. Pat. No. 5,123,115, it has the disadvantage that surgeons often perspire perfusly during operations and surgeon's caps and hoods, therefore, become wet so that the adhesive fails. A related problem is that, because the eyeglass retainer is fastened to the exterior surface of the surgeon's hood, it can be easily pulled away from the hood by the surgeon when he is attempting to disengage the doubled back distal portion of the retainer from a proximal portion. Therefore, it is an object of this invention to provide an eyeglass retainer headpiece for use by technicians which is relatively inexpensive to construct, but with which an eyeglass retainer thereof is firmly, and permanently attached to a cap thereof without undue fear that it can be pulled away by a user.